The Zone was cordoned off by the military, who would shoot on sight anyone foolish enough to get inside.
Soviet authorities established an 'Exclusion Zone' around, but a second explosion hit the reactor in 2006, creating The Zone as we know it – dangerous place, filled with mutated creatures, deadly radiation, and a strange, anomalous energy. In 1986, the world's worst nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.